


Cool For The Summer

by NovaStars42



Series: The Kids Aren't Alright [16]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: A little bit of Jake's backstory, Callie's back story, Camping, F/F, Family Bonding, Ghost Stories, Grandpa harley is a nutcase and shouldn't be trusted to drive truck or hold a gun, Humanstuck, I didnt know what to do with this request i tried my best, Jake hates tents, Love Confessions, camping trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-18
Updated: 2016-11-18
Packaged: 2018-08-31 18:35:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8589310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NovaStars42/pseuds/NovaStars42
Summary: Jade takes Callie on a weekend camping trip with her family.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all! So this was requested a few months ago, (May actually, I didn’t forget!!) and I’m trying to fill prompts at a rate they make sense in the story! I think I still have two more chapters, and then the end of act, and I have a fun intermission planned.  
> College is a thing, so updates will be slow. Sorry all.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMsHEKy8N14&index=16&list=PLwBvGRZ4qTdnLZHpBumYJM2m92t14U8x6

The Harley family wasn’t known for being the typical suburban family. Our house was the only one on the block that was different. Our house was also the only house that routinely needed a house sitter. Weekend camping trips were by far my favorite part of the summer. My grandpa loaded the truck up with trunks and bags and boxes of camping gear and drove us out into the woods for three whole days of family fun.

  
Grandpa always drove, and my cousin Jake always rode shotgun, holding the map. No GPS systems allowed, not even our phones! Grandpa wasn’t a big fan of technology, other than guns. I usually rode in the cramped back seat with my dog Bec, but today he’d been expelled to the back. We had a guest this weekend, my friend Callie!

  
I’d brought along an armful of games for the ride, but a length of string had amused is for most of it. I taught Callie to play cat’s cradle! She took to it right away but as the day got longer we’d lost interest. Three hours was just too long!

  
Grandpa and Jake bickered a lot. Over speed limits and road signs mostly. As we got closer to the campground, the chattering increased. Grandpa had a bit of a lead foot when he got excited.

  
“We’re here!” I exclaimed as the sign came into view. A smile crept onto my grandfather’s face. The car sped up.

“Now grandpa,” Jake began condescendingly.

“Oh, dear, what was that Jake?” My grandpa asked, rolling his window down, “I can’t hear you over the wind, chap!”

“Grandpa! You're going to get us kicked out! Again!” Jake argued. My grandpa was not hard of hearing, and Jake was easily understood wind or not.

“You’ll have to speak up, son!” Grandpa shouted, “I didn’t catch that!”

“Why do I even bother?” Jake sighed, exasperated as the car blasted past the front gate much to the confusion of the ranger.

“Is this quite normal, Jade?” Callie asked, looking worriedly between the rapidly passing scenery and my quarreling family.

“The speeding or the banter?” I joked, laughing nervously. “Yeah, no uh, it’s normal.”

“We’re set to have a jolly good time!” My grandpa added. “Oh, hold on!”

“Hold on to-” Callie didn’t get a chance to finish.

The paved road abruptly stopped, spitting us out on a gravel road headed up the mountain. The jarring of the truck sent all of us scrambling for the door panels, searching for something, anything to grab onto.

I watched Callie’s eyes go wide and Jake swore. Grandpa threw caution to the wind and laughed, yanking the wheel to the right as the truck veered off the gravel road onto a two tracker.

“Becquerel is in the back, grandad!” Jake shouted. “Slow down!”

“He’s strapped down!”

From what I could see of the speedometer, which wasn’t much, we were going at least fifty. We hit pothole after pot joke, gravel flying and tires spinning. Callie hadn’t begun to relax, and I thought she might actually bail on us. If she did I wouldn't blame her. I’d tucked and rolled out of this truck many times.

The vehicle came to an abrupt, squealing, tire screeching, jarring stop at the campsite. My torso strained against the seat belt as it flung me foreword. My head felt like it’d nearly come off.

“Oh!” Callie uttered, taking a long, deep breath.

I didn’t get a word in.

My grandpa flung the driver’s side door open, springing out of his seat. The truck was still running, and it began to roll forward until Jake hastily reached over and yanked the parking brake.

“I’m off!” He exclaimed, pulling his personal rifle from his not so secret hiding spot under the seat.

“Don’t shoot anything out of season!” I called after him, but I didn’t think he heard me. He was already dashing off into the wood, gun at the ready.

“He’s,” Callie paused, clearing her throat, “quite spry for a man, um, his age.”

“He’s an eccentric old bugger is what he is,” Jake huffed. “Leaves us to unpack all his junk.”

“Come on, Jake, you know you like to set up the tents!” I smirked, opening my door and sliding out. Callie followed after me.

Jake shot me a look as he turned the truck off. “I hate tents.”

I laughed and jumped up into the back of the truck, using the tire as a step. My dog Bec was situated in a covered cage up near the cab. I undid a few of the straps holding his crate in place and pulled back the canvas. Bec was already standing, his tail wagging and his tongue lolling out of his mouth.

I unlatched the crate and Bec stepped out. Jake was already around to the tailgate, grabbing the bag with my tent in it and the air mattresses. Bec bolted out of the truck bed, springing off the tailgate and nearly knocking Jake over in the process.

Jake dropped everything, scowling intensely at our dog. Bec was too busy peeing on trees to care.

I loved camping.

Jake hated it.

Callie was picking the bags up a moment later, grinning at my cousin. “Where should I put these?”

“That’s nice of you to help, but I think I’ve got it,” Jake insisted, grinning back. Callie shook her head.

“I want to help.”

“Right. Thanks, love. You could take them over near the fire pit for me.”

I grabbed up a couple of sleeping bags and the other tent before I jumped down out of the truck, leaving Jake to struggle with grandpa’s trunk of junk he’d brought along. Jake huffed, hefting the leather chest down out of the truck. With a grunt he lifted it and carried it to the spot grandpa’s tent usually sat.

Callie and I made a few more trips back and forth to the truck, unloading gear and supplies. I found the cooking items stowed away in a duffle bag and figured if Jake was handling the tents, I’d better handle the food.

Callie unpacked and I situated things. I positioned the cooking rack over the fire pit, and then unfolded the extra table we’d brought along. It was mostly for the fire pokers and the paper plates, but occasionally grandpa butchered fish on it. Under the table I placed the coolers.

“How are you doing, Jake?” I called, looking up from another packed bag of canned goods.

My cousin looked like a cat covered by a blanket. He was a lump moving under the canvas, cursing as he flailed his limbs. “Don’t ask!”

Callie giggled next to me, handing over a roll of paper towel.

Unpacking sort of just carried on like that after a while. Callie and I set up the camp, setting up tables and a canopy to cook under, starting the campfire and organizing supplies. Jake got one tent up in two hours, so Callie and I decided to just set up our tent on our own.

Grandpa had bought each of us our own tent when Jake and I moved in. Since I shared my tent with Bec, I had a little extra room in mine. Callie settled her bag in next to mine. Together we fired up the air mattress pump and bedded down my queen sized mattress with blankets enough for the both of us.

As the sun started down, we realized dinner time had passed a couple hours ago. Jake finished up on the final tent, and he stood, stretching his back.

“I don’t suppose the old fart’ll be back until he absolutely has to, want to bust out the hot dogs, ladies?”

“You’ll have to show me how to cook them!” Callie agreed, nodding. “You cook them over the fire, correct?”

She was trying hard not to seem too eager, but her excitement was clear.

“Correctimundo!!” My cousin chirped. “Over the fire is the right best way to do it if I do say so myself! Come right on over, I’ll teach you!”

I decided to just let Jake take over. I retrieved the hot dog pokers, and dolled them out. I ended up getting the hot dogs too, and the buns, and the ketchup, because Jake was already too wrapped up in his spiel of word vomit to move.

I liked to make my hot dogs slow. I skirted right around the edge of the fire, trying to cook them properly, all the way through without burning anything. Jakes solution was just to shove his into the flames. Callie grimaced when hers came out charred, and turned to me for help.

I reached over and plucked Callie’s hot dog off the skewer, burning my fingers just briefly, and flung it off to the side. Bec raced over to it as fast as he could, scarfing it down without even chewing. I rolled my eyes, shaking my head at the Shepard. He came to sit at my feet as I replaced Callie’s hot dog.

“Thank you, Jade,” she smiled, knitting her eyebrows in sort of a hopeful, sheepish look. She was blushing, just slightly, but I thought that might be from the heat of the fire.

“Your welcome,” I grinned back.

“I woulda ate that!” Jake insisted, jamming his burnt dog into a bun. He doused it in an unhealthy amount of ketchup and bit into it. He didn’t seem at all affected when red condiment squirted out the bottom of the bun and onto his shorts.

“You can have the next one, Jake,” I sighed, exasperated. Between the dog, my cousin and my grandpa, I felt like the only intelligent being in the house sometimes.

“Am I holding it far enough away, Jade?” My attention turned right back to Callie.

“You can hold it a little closer,” I instructed.

She moved it, and held it there, looking determined to roast that dog. That was cute. She was cute.

Time passed slow at the campsite. We roasted hot dogs until after dark. I wondered if Callie was playing dumb, if not just a little. She’d never been camping, she claimed, but I wasn’t sure I believed she couldn’t tell when a hot dog was done. She turned to ask me a lot of questions though, I didn’t mind answering them.

Bec slowly worked himself onto my lap, beginning with sliding his head under my hand and ending with a breathing white blanket in my lap.

We still hadn’t seen hide or hair of grandpa, but it wasn’t anything to be worried about. I hadn’t heard any gunshots.

“Well now ladies! I do declare that this is not a proper camping trip until we tell some horror stories!” My cousin piped up, grinning ear to ear.

“Oh my god, I’ve heard them all!” I argued. Jake told dumb scary stories. They used to scare me as a kid, but then I figured he got most of them from the back of our cereal boxes when I learned to read.

“No! I’ve got a new one! Got it just for tonight since Callie was coming! What do you say, gal? Up for a story?” Jake batted his too long eyelashes at Callie, who nodded and just like that I was trapped.

“Fine, but I’m getting the s'mores stuff,” I said, getting up as Jake started his story.

Jake cleared his throat a little too dramatically before he began.

“Now, this is a true story Callie! Got it from my dad in a letter. My mum and dad travel all across the world, and they each wrote me from The London Zoological Society this time around. That’s sort of their base, I was raised in London, that’s where the accent comes from, yeah? But that’s not all that important.”

“Anywho, the story. My dad was telling me about this man he meet in a pub, said he was from a little town way out in the country and herds sheep for a living. They got to talking and the man was out of cash, so he asks my dad to foot him another beer, in exchange he’ll tell him a story. One he’s never told anyone else.”  
I returned to my folding chair near the fire, and Bec climbed back into my lap as I opened the bag of marshmallows. I was surprised I’d actually never heard this one.

“Oh, of course my dad is curious, so he buys him the beer. The man gets this real grim look on his face, and starts telling. Back in the seventies, when this chap was a young man, before he was married and all that, he was driving a farm truck down an old country road. It was sheep and cow fields as far as the eye could see, for kilometers. Where one stopped another started, and there weren’t any houses.”

“So he’s driving along with a quarter of a ton of grain in the back when he sees this girl. She’s got on a little skirt and a white blouse with a little powder blue jacket on over it. It’s September in England, and it’s cold but it hadn’t rained, and the girl was soaked from head to toe,” Jake spoke with broad, hard As, and he sometimes dropped his Rs. He didn’t have a cockney accent like people stereotyped British people to have, he just spoke with different pronunciation.

“So he pulls over and rolls down the window and asks her what’s wrong. She says she fell into a river, and she was walking back home after her friend’s ditched her. He tells her to hop in, and she does, taking her jacket off to lay it on the seat.”

“He asks he where home is, and she tells him, and even though it’s out of his way he figures his boss will understand. She stays pretty quiet. He turns the heater up ‘cause she’s so pale her lips are turning blue. He finally pulls up to her house and there’s a big set of gates on the end of the driveway.”

“She tells him that’s far enough, she can walk, and gets out of the truck. He asks her if she’s sure and she tells him she is and slips through the gates and heads up to the house. He turns around and starts heading back to work, he gets halfway there when he realizes the girl left her jacket. She he doubles back around to take it to her.”

“He waits at the gate for just a minute before he decides it’s alright. No dogs in the yard and there weren’t alarms back then, so he drives on up to the house. It’s a big, old house, and he uses the door knocker to knock. And old woman comes to the door, and asks him what he wants.”

“He tells her that he gave a young lady a ride here, and tries to hand her the jacket. The old woman tells him that no young ladies have lived in the house since her daughter, and that her daughter drowned in the nearby river in the nineteen fifties. She slams the door in his face, and he takes himself back to his truck. Said he kept the jacket all those years, and sometimes he rides down that old country road, looking for the ghost of the girl who left it.”

Callie’s grin was made eerie by the light of the fire. I wasn’t scared, no way, because I’d read his dad’s letter and that story was nowhere on it. He’d made the whole thing up. Besides, I didn’t believe in ghosts. That was… dumb. And unrealistic. I wasn’t scared.

“That was pretty good, Jake, but I’ll do you one better. How about one to really scare the pants off of you?” Callie, shy little Callie challenged.

“Oh, you're on!” My cousin agreed loudly, “Jade, you’ll judge!”

“Sure,” I agreed half heartedly, fisting my fingers in to Bec’s fur.

“This is also a true story, it happened to my uncle. Before he moved to the United States, he lived in the Ukraine and he worked as a clerk in Ivankiv, which is about an hour from the Chernobyl disaster site. It was in May, in nineteen eighty six, right after the reactor exploded.”

“My uncle was locking up the store he managed, after dark. He had stayed after closing for quite some time, long after all the employees had gone home. It was a weeknight, so the streets were empty as well.”

“My uncle decides that he is going to take a side street home, a short cut, down a dark alley. He was not scared because it was a way he had gone hundreds of times. There was a German Shepard in the yard to his right, the woman on the second floor to the left made delicious desserts, it was his home and he was not afraid.”

“He was almost home when a terrible screech cut the air. Out of the sky swooped a gigantic black bird, with feathers as dark as the night sky it soared though. It had a wingspan of twenty feet or more, with a crow’s fan shaped tail feathers. It swooped down, right for him, my uncle said he would never forget the look in its piercing red eyes.”

“He saw hellfire, and the glow of hatred that came from deep in its very soul. It screamed again, and my uncle mocked it, his lungs working but his legs failing. He was frozen as pure fear overtook him, and the creature drew near, talons directed to his throat.”

“At the last second, a car alarm went off, and the bird pulled away, its claws catching in his hair and the gust from its wings knocking him down. It flew off, never to be seen again. The next day, when the newspapers were delivered to my uncle’s store, he saw it on the very back page. The blackbird of Chernobyl, a radioactive creature that was last seen flying from the billowing smoke of the destroyed reactor. My uncle picked up everything he could and moved to the states with his next paycheck.”  
Callie trailed off ominously, sending shivers down my spine. My arms had goose bumps, and I snuggled a little closer to Bec.

“That wasn’t even a ghost story!” Jake argued, crossing his arms.

“You said 'horror’ story though!” Callie objected, “you didn’t say they had to be about ghosts!”

Jake huffed. “Alright, alright, who won, Jade?”

“I dunno guys, I think you both did a pretty good-”

Something large and warm fell on my shoulder, and before I even looked to see what it was I screamed. Bec jumped off of my lap, barking loudly and going at whatever was coming at me. I twisted around, coming face to face with the illuminated silhouette of my grandpa, his gun in one hand and a dead fish in the other.

“Easy kids! It’s just me! Down, Bec, down boy,” my grandfather chuffed. “You all have a nice evening? I’ve got breakfast for tomorrow morning!”

He held up the fish, grinning. Jake groaned.

“You know, grandpa, most people fish with a fishing pole, not a rifle.”

“They aren’t having as much fun as I am though, are they?” Grandpa winked, chuckling .

“Come on Callie, he’s gonna clean that fish and I don’t think you wanna see it,” I huffed, my heart still beating out of my chest.

“Good call!” My friend agreed, “we could go situate the tent?”

I didn’t reply, I just got up, and headed to the tent. Callie and Bec were right behind me. We zipped the tent up behind us and flipped on our battery powered lantern. I turned it on as bright as it would go, just for good measure. We’d already laid the bed out, so we sat on the air mattress and finished getting ready for bed. I laid out Bec’s blanket at the foot of the bed, got him a bowl of water, and changed into my pajamas. Callie had her back turned to me, and we agreed that was fine. She changed too, and we laid back on the bed.

“This is such an exciting trip! Camping is great, Jade! Would you like to watch a movie?” Callie grinned, digging in her pants pocket to pull out camping contraband, her cell phone. It wasn’t new like mine, but it still played videos just fine.

“Sure!” I agreed, and she tapped a few times and brought up a movie we both liked.

“Turn off the lamp, would you?” She asked, laying back.

I hesitated.

“Let’s keep it on a little while longer,” I suggested.

“Oh, are you afraid, Jade?” Callie gasped, genuine concern crossing her face.

“Oh, no,” I lied through my teeth, “not really, it’s just uh.”

“Say no more!” She ushered, “I don’t mind the light! Actually, I sleep with a night light at home anyway.”

“Can I ask though, since I know Jake’s story was fake, did that really happen to your uncle?” I inquired sheepishly.

“Oh, no, of course not! My uncle moved here only a few years before I did,” my friend tried to assure me, “The bird is something like a legend, but my story was just an old wives tale, just trying to scare teenagers away from going near the city, since radiation gives you cancer.”

That made me feel a little better. I nodded, but now I had a new question. “Forgive me for getting off topic, or being intrusive, but is that where your from? The Ukraine?”

  
Callie looked conflicted, like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to answer, but she finally spoke after a long silence. “Do you promise you won’t tell if I tell you something?”

“I won’t tell a soul!”

It was her turn to nod, and she paused for a moment longer and then replied.

“My mother, my brother and I, we come from Turkey but we lived in the Ukraine ever since my father left. We did not live in the good part of the Ukraine. So we came here, to the United States. We are not supposed to be here, you see? We came to visit my uncle, but we never left.”

“So wait, is there a reason you don’t go back? Oh, I’m so sorry, I don’t mean to pry,” I said quickly, trying to make her feel less insecure. I didn’t want her to feel like she had to tell me, she was very insecure about all this in the first place.

“It’s alright, it sort of feels good to tell someone. Like I don’t have to hide it,” she smiled, “we were very poor at home. My uncle got my mother a very good job. She gets um, what’s the phrase? Paid under the table?”

“Oh! Definitely! I don’t blame you guys for getting out of a bad situation!” I wanted to slap myself. I really couldn’t come up with anything more comforting to say to her?

“Yes, um, but I have something else to tell you too. If you don’t mind.”

“Shoot!”

“Alright,” she laughed nervously, “ I um. Hm. This is so hard! Your so nice, and you're confident! And you are so supportive. I, um, I feel something very real about you, Jade.”

“You feel about-” then it hit me. I felt my face heat up. “M-me? You feel that way about me?”

“Yes. Did I offend you? I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, I-” she gasped, horrified.

“You didn’t offend me, oh my gosh!”

I was completely and utterly caught off guard. Sure, I liked girls. To be fair, I also liked boys, but I had no idea Callie felt this way about me. She’d never said anything to make me think she felt any way about any gender. This must have taken so much courage for her to say. She was shy, and it took her time. I wondered how long she’d wanted to say it.

“Was..” Callie paused, “was I too foreword?”

My thoughts cleared to give her all of my attention.

“Well um, to be perfectly honest, I don’t know? It’s just so unexpected. I uh, I mean, I’m glad you told me!” I tripped over my words, scrambling to say something, anything. “I’m really glad you told me, I just hadn’t ever thought of you that way before. You weren’t exactly dropping hints!”

Her mouth moved into an 'O’ shape and her eyebrows rose. Her expression was somewhere in between shock and embarrassment. “Oh. Oh I’m so sorry, I just, I’m sorry. I understand if you just want to be friends.”

I laughed nervously, shifting in a failed attempted to get comfortable. “Well I’m not opposed to being more than friends! I mean I think! Let’s just see where this goes, okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed, nodding.

I reached over and pulled her close, hugging her and smiling and she hugged me back. Everything meant a little bit more now. Warm. Happy. Peaceful under the starry sky.

**Author's Note:**

> I might do more with their family later. I started this before the new Hiveswap characters were introduced, and I wasn't going back to fix it. This chapter made me kinda mad because I just waned it to be over and done, but I also wanted to do it justice since it as a requested pairing. I hope I did alright.
> 
> like it? Drop me a comment.


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